like a year or so ago there were a bunch of articles where people were outraged about the "trend" of people using their benefits to buy stuff like wild alaskan salmon and organic produce

"these people shouldn't be able to eat better than i do!" and such

so no matter what you do, you'll be in the wrong
they should work on everything classified as "food" regardless of if it is "real" food and absolutely everyone should shut up about how poor people spend their money

the most i ever made in a year was like $13k and I checked out how much i would qualify for and it was like $40 a month
this is not exactly an outrageous amount of money and i also pay taxes which is something a lot of poor people do even though non-poor people like to refer to themselves as "the taxpayers" exclusively
i'm eventually going to be living by myself making a little over a thousand dollars a month that way more than half will have to go to rent and i just wanna buy some damn organic spring mix with my snap card

I like to remind my fellow employees that without SNAP our jobs probably wouldn't exist whenever they complain about food stamps.

I had a big argument/debate with my last supervisor about the Real Food thing. Yes, they should only be used for Real Food, however it is impossible to account for the myriad of possible exceptions, not to mention the arbitrary nature of some Real Food vs Junk Food (for example, fruit juice is not much healthier than soda).

The best one is when someone buys beer with cash and food with SNAP and people are like "they shouldn't do that!" and it's like, well yes in a perfect world, but in our world people do things because they are stressed or addicted to something and who are you to take away their recreation just because you don't agree with it, when you'd probably be fine with them going to the movies or something else like that that isn't a "vice" even though it's really the same damn thing.

thats weird because i think the working class getting free food so they can afford beer is consistent with the notion of a perfect world.

access to nutritious food should a basic human right with no questions asked.

but no meat amirite

also, should access to nutritious food be a basic chimpanzee right? what about a basic gorilla right? a basic elephant right? a basic lion right? lions eat meat tho, what do we do there. does the lion's basic right to have access to nutritious food trump the springbok's basic right to have access to life?

This is gonna be a sanctimonious (and TLDR) canadian post but whatever, as someone from a country where you can pretty much get welfare if you just apply for it a long as you can prove (and there's not much hoops to jump through there) your'e either not getting an income or at least not enough, i find the idea of food stamps sad and humiliating. Like oh well we're gonna help our poor some i guess but since they cant be trusted with actual money, let's make sure they really are using this for food and have to actually show it when they buy it. hopefully the shame will get them to pick themselves off by the bootstraps and get off them.

i mean my mom was on welfare earlier this year (she had to get operated for a tumor on her ovaries, that the government was paying of course, so couldn't work for a bit) and she still had property worth about 100 000$ that she was trying to sell and was staying at my brother's. She wasn't technically poor, but they still let her have some. In America people would scream entitlement. Personally i'm glad to be in a country where the moment you're unemployed for whatever reason, the government is ready to step in to help you. There's been countries where they've been talking about guaranteed minimal income, I think that's a terrific idea. I've heard it mentioned by a party here.

What I dont get about America (and i know this likely doesn't apply for anyone here) is that there's always this cliche of proud to be an American and all and it seems to me if you're proud of your country, then there should be a sense of solidarity, you should want to help your fellow citizens. But not in america, for a lot it seems your fellow citizen is your enemy. It's like i'm proud to be in a country where the guy next door is dying while i've got more than plenty and i'm not willing to part with one cent of it to help him with because you know, bootstraps.

Quite frankly i don't give a shit that part of my taxes goes to help people get healthcare or welfare (well ok so at my income level i dont pay lots of taxes...). Even if some of these people are abusing it. That's part of the cons but you can't throw away the system just because a small % are not deserving of it. That still in total losses does not in any way get close to the amount of taxes the 1% are not paying by putting their money in fiscal paradises anyway (and anyway ive known quite a few people on welfare, none of which i consider were abusing it). I don't care to pay because everyone else is also paying for the right of me to have it too. And if i somehow DON'T need it (well everybody will need healthcare at some point, but welfare), then that means i'm making enough money to be able to afford helping others get it.

working for the ACS you start to notice that there's also a benefits gap, as in you are pretty poor but you make "too much money" to qualify for something because 1) it's for the truly destitute and/or 2) you got another form of assistance, which isn't enough, which disqualifies you from further benefits

Working in legal services was tough for this reason (well, among many others). We had absolute limits on who we could serve, based on the federal poverty guidelines. There is an enormous gap between people who qualify for legal services and people who can afford private attorneys. I'm not really sure how to fill that. Legal service organizations need way way way way more funding with much fewer strings tied to it.